Camera Awesome is an excellent replacement for your iPhone's standard camera app. At first glance it seem to offer identical functionality so you'll feel right at home, but underneath the hood is some real photo composition and editing power—all for free.

When composing your photos, you can tap the drawer at the top of the screen to bring down helpful overlays to guide you. This includes the fibonacci golden ratio, the standard rule of thirds, and more. You can also enable automatic post-processing effects. If you'd prefer to take a standard photo and edit later, you'll have even more options at your disposal. The first is the Awesomizer, which adjusts the sharpness, temperature, vibrance, and contrast of your photos with one easy slider. If you prefer, you can edit each of these options individually for a more specific result. You can also crop and transform your photos, apply effects presets, and add filters, textures, and frames. When you're done editing, save your photo to the camera roll with just one tap.

Advertisement

So how does it stack up to Camera+, our favorite camera app for the iPhone? Although Camera Awesome is incredibly feature-rich, intuitive, and fun, it's feature set—although similar—isn't quite as effective as what you'll get with Camera+. Additionally, Camera Awesome feels sluggish. To be fair, I tested it on an iPhone 4 but even at twice the speed it still would feel slower than Camera+. Nonetheless, it's a very powerful and comprehensive app that won't cost you a cent. If you like your apps free, you can't go wrong.